Monday, October 09, 2006

First, the Lefties were all bemoaning the GOP's inability to control their rogue homosexuals... Or conflating graphic instant messages to an of-age person of the same sex to pedophilia (nevermind the fact that pedophilia by definition involves pre-pubescent children). OliverWillis had more than 10 posts which referred to Foleygate as the "Republican Pedophile Scandal" and asking questions such as "What did he know and when did he know it?"

Hi, it's TRex and I was wondering if we could talk some time real soon. I know we've had our differences in the past and all, and that some of the things I have said about you self-hating, traitorous, invertebrate bitchez have been less than kind. But I also understand that things have gotten a little uncomfortable for y'all over there in the stuffy, dirty closets of RNC headquarters of late, so I thought that out of the goodness of my heart, I would offer you this one last opportunity for polite discourse before the November elections come and a Democratic Congress proceeds to hose down your lives with shit-sauce on the one side while the Christian Right try to burn you at the stake on the other.

Never mind that we told you so. Never mind that all this time you've surely known at some level that your affiliation with the Republican Party was wrong. The Mark Foley debacle is a grenade in the gay GOP foxhole. This scandal has legs. Mark Foley's legs. And they're in the air. With the elections a month away, the Reich Wing is going to be looking for a scapegoat, and guess who that's going to be? Funny how things work out, isn't it?[...]

It goes on... So, the GOP is deficient if it doesn't police its members and monitor every Instant Message or email that its members might send to anyone... and if they start to ask questions about an email that might say "Hey, would be great if you'd send me a photo of yourself!", it's night of the Long Knives and the GOP is killing Matthew Shepard all over again.

If only the Dems were as serious about monitoring terrorists emails as they were about monitoring emails from a GOP congressman.

ut I very much doubt, despite the expertise with which the sheep have been rounded up and set baa-ing, that Showtime at the Foley Bergere will pay off in November. There are many legitimate reasons for electors to toss out the Republican Congress, but the notion that they're a hotbed of gay pedophile enablers is not one of them. Had Foley dug in and attempted to cling on, his GOP colleagues would have been all over TV deploring his behavior, calling on him to step down, expressing outrage, etc. After two or three days, a few lefties might even have piped up to assail the Republican theocrat sexual McCarthyites tormenting the poor chap. Had he actually had sex with congressional pages, affronted gay groups would have pointed out this was perfectly legal in the relevant jurisdictions and would have complained ferociously about the stigmatizing of gay relationships and Democrats would have declared there should be places for all at the American table, especially had Foley done a Jim McGreevey and announced that "my truth is I am a gay American." A few quirks of timing and the parties' respective roles might have been entirely reversed. Scandalwise, the Republicans always play the submissive masochists but the Dems are bi-swingers, happy to flay the GOP as either (a) uptight prudes or (b) pedophile enablers, according to what suits. What would have been consistent in both narratives is the assumption by the Democrats, the media and the Gay Page Tip-Line end of the Republican Party is that the electorate is stupid. In the sense that there's any "child abuse" going on here, the American people are being treated like children and abused by the politico-media class.

But it is fair to say liberals aren’t thinking things through. Democratic strategist Bob Beckel suggested this week that the mere fact Foley is gay should have “raised questions” about his friendships with pages. If Foley were a Democrat and GOP spinners suggested gays are automatically suspect as predators, the now-silent Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights groups would go ballistic.

What liberals don’t understand is that social conservatives actually believe their moral rhetoric, even when it’s politically inconvenient. That’s why GOP Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana had to resign when his marital infidelities became public during the Clinton impeachment, much to the chagrin of Democrats who wanted to advance the “everybody does it” defense of President Clinton. And that’s why vast numbers of social conservatives now want Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s head on a pike.

Meanwhile, the only moral lapse that reliably and consistently offends all liberals collectively is hypocrisy. As Howard Dean declared on Meet the Press last year: “Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.” But he continued: “I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.” This is a remarkably convenient principle insofar as it can indict only people with actual principles.